Additional protections welcome, but Respect at Work Bill is a missed opportunity to modernise Queensland’s outdated equality laws

The Queensland Human Rights Commissioner says while the introduction of today’s Respect at Work Bill to state parliament does provide some important steps forward, he is disappointed that the government appears to have walked back their commitment to introduce a new Anti-Discrimination Act in this term.

Today’s Bill, if passed, would introduce a ‘positive duty’ or legal obligation on public and private entities to do all they reasonably can to prevent discrimination and harassment before it happens. It would also extend protections from discrimination to people who need it most, including victim-survivors of domestic and family violence and people experiencing homelessness.

Despite these advancements the Bill falls well short of the government’s commitment to modernise Queensland’s equality laws and ensure they are fit for purpose for a contemporary Queensland.

What the bill does:

Introduces a legal obligation on the public and private sectors to do all they can to eliminate discrimination and harassment before they happen
Creates new provisions about workplace harassment and hostile working environments, but only on the basis of sex, and not other attributes like race, age, or disability
Extends protection from discrimination to people experiencing homelessness or domestic and family violence, an important and timely response to Queensland’s housing crisis and surge in domestic violence
Creates a new protection from hateful, reviling, seriously contemptuous or seriously ridiculing conduct for some groups, and extends protection against vilification based on a person’s sex, age or disability.

What the bill does not do:

Provide a clear and holistic reworking of Queensland’s anti-discrimination law as recommended in the Building Belonging report
Strengthen protections equitably for groups experiencing vulnerability – instead, some people in some circumstances will be better protected than others who experience discrimination and harassment at an arguably higher rate
Recognise that people may experience discrimination on the basis of combined grounds, and this can have a cumulative and compounding impact
Clarify or streamline processes for complaints – rather the Bill would make some processes less clear by introducing different time limits for some types of complaints
Update and modernise the Act’s legal tests and definitions to bring the law up to date with contemporary community needs
Strengthen protections for people with disability by creating a standalone requirement to make reasonable adjustments
Close a gap in protections created by outdated exceptions, such as excusing non-profit organisations from having obligations under the Act, a situation unique to Queensland.

Quotes attributable to Scott McDougall, Queensland Human Rights Commissioner

Equality legislation should be considered, evidence-based, well balanced, and as far as is possible, should ensure that nobody is left behind. Instead, we have a bill which appears hastily constructed, is unclear in scope, with an apparent scattergun approach to implementing recommendations the government committed to over a year ago.

I am deeply disappointed and at a loss to understand why, after 3+ years of extensive consultation and steady progress, including the release in February of a consultation draft Bill, the opportunity to uplift our laws to reflect Queensland’s modern community needs and aspirations, appears to have been recklessly abandoned.

Queenslanders have spent many thousands of hours sharing their expertise and experiences to these consultations and have provided clear and compelling evidence about the barriers to equity and justice under the current framework. I expect the community will be justifiably confused and frustrated that the end result of this work is piecemeal amendments which do not go far enough to address many of the practical concerns they raised, both with us and with government.

The introduction of a legal obligation to prevent discrimination and harassment is a positive step forward and, given the right enforcement mechanisms and resourcing for the public and private sectors, will make a big difference to Queenslanders most in need of protection. It will help shift the focus of the Act to prevention and remove the burden of eliminating discrimination and harassment from those who experience it.

However, this piecemeal approach to reform is the equivalent of giving one room in the house a coat of paint and some new curtains when the building’s foundations are in need of attention.

Background

In May 2021, the Attorney General requested the Queensland Human Rights Commission undertake a review of the Anti-Discrimination Act - the first holistic consideration of the Act since its introduction more than 30 years ago. Following a comprehensive 14-month consultation and review, the Commission published its final report Building Belonging, which was tabled in parliament in September 2022.

The report made 46 recommendations to modernise and strengthen the law, including the introduction of a new Act to repeal and replace the existing legislation. The recommendations were based on the extensive consultation undertaken as part of the review (including more than 120 stakeholder consultations, 4 public consultations, 6 roundtables, 159 written submissions, and an online survey which received 1,109 responses). When tabling the report in the Queensland Parliament, the then Attorney-General described the review as "comprehensive, consultative, inclusive and evidence-based".

Last year, the Queensland Government committed to act on the report’s recommendations and introduce a Bill to repeal and replace the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 within the current term of government. This included a commitment to introduce a legal obligation on individuals and organisations to take reasonable and proportionate steps to eliminate discrimination, sexual harassment, and other discriminatory conduct before it happens.

In March this year, the government progressed this commitment by publishing a consultation draft new Anti-Discrimination Bill 2024 that would replace the current law, and again held more roundtables and received further submissions from the community.

- ENDS

More Information

Building Belonging report and recommendations: https://www.qhrc.qld.gov.au/about us/reviews/ada

Queensland Government’s response to Building Belonging report and recommendations: https://www.justice.qld.gov.au/initiatives/qld-govt-response-qhrc-anti discrimination-act-review

Media Contacts

QHRC Media

Email: comms@qhrc.qld.gov.au

Phone: 0407 657 411